nothing but comes readier to the hand

you gave it to me once
a gristled little slice
of heart
bobbing in a vial;
pressed it to my palm
as we passed

you whispered
of things we couldn't
say. i nodded
and held it to the
morning light

which caught the fibers--
mealy muscle and
strands darker still;

i thought of
pathology and the incidence
of disease as i watched
you walk away i slipped
it in my pocket

and waited. should i--
should i have
tested its strength or
plucked it to pieces or
skipped it across the sea

should i

Aloysius was born in 1918 to a woman named Gretchen. She took one look at him and decided he was the physical embodiment of all the evils produced by the Great War, purged from the world through her uterus. But she loved him anyway, even if he was just a scowling devil’s head on a long, flesh-covered spinal cord. He came out with a moustache and beard and pompadour and a scowl flashing over pointed teeth, but that was just how it was. She loved him anyway. “Other mothers woulda thrown you down a well, Al-oh-ish-us,” she would say in her Kansas drawl, “but not me. I just love you too damn much, even if you are ugly.”